THE 



GARDENER. 



JULY 1869. 



THE ROSE. 



{Continued from page 251.) 

 CHAPTER XII. COXCERNING ROSE-SHOWS. 



HEN tliat deliglitful young officer of her Majesty's Guards 

 jDaid a guinea, no long time ago in London, to the great 

 spiritualist, medium, or whatever the arch-humbug called 

 himself, of the season, and when, after a lengthened com- 

 munication with the spirit of his departed mother, he looked at his 

 watch, and courteously apologised for his abrupt exodus, "but he had 

 promised to lunch with the lady in question punctually at two o'clock," 

 he completely demolished the baseless fabric of my little dream, how 

 charming it would be to have an hour's table-talk with some of our old 

 Rosarians. 



I am with them, nevertheless, and without humbug, in spirit many 

 a time, honouring their memories, and always regarding them with a 

 thankful filial love. I like to think of them among their Eoses, as I 

 wander among my own, mindful how much of my happiness I owe, 

 humanly speaking, to their skill and enterprise, remembering them as 

 we Rosarians of to-day would fain be remembered hereafter, when our 

 children's children shall pluck their snow-white Madame Furtado, and 

 wish we were there to see. I like to think of Lee of Hammersmith 

 complacently surveying those standard E,ose-trees which he introduced 

 from France in the year 1818, which were the first ever seen in Eng- 

 land, and which he sold readily (it was reported at the time that the 

 Duke of Clarence gave him a right royal order for 1000 trees) at one 



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